Theodore Edward Braxton Reeve—Ward, to his intimate friends—climbed the steps to Snowe’s Registry Office thinking about how many governesses he’d chased away as a boy.

He had vivid memories of the sour-faced women who had come through the door of his house—and what their backs looked like as they marched out again.

If his father and stepmother hadn’t been in Sweden, he would have dropped by their house to apologize, if only because his young wards seemed capable of topping his score, and it was a pain in the arse to be on the other side.

Frankly, his half-siblings, Lizzie and Otis—whom he hadn’t even known existed until a few weeks ago—were hellions. Devils. Small devils with trouble stamped on their foreheads.

Their governess, a Snowe’s governess, had been in the household for only forty-eight hours, which had to be a record.

The registry wasn’t at all what Ward had expected, from the burly guard posing as a footman to the unoccupied waiting room. He had envisioned a cluster of women sitting about, waiting to be dispatched to nurseries—and he had planned to choose whichever one most resembled a colonel in the Royal Marines.

This chamber looked more like a lady’s parlor than a waiting room. It was elegantly appointed, from the tassels adorning striped silk curtains to the gilt chairs. In fact, it was about as fancy as any room he’d seen in a lifetime of living in his father’s various houses.

And his father, Lord Gryffyn, was an earl.

That said, Snowe probably had to put on airs in order to convince people to pay his outrageous fees.

Since Ward needed to impress the House of Lords with his nonexistent parental abilities in order to secure guardianship of his siblings—not to mention getting Otis up to snuff before his brother entered Eton in September—he was prepared to pay whatever it took to get a first-rate governess.

A young housemaid appeared from a side door. “I’m here to see Mr. Snowe,” Ward told her.

A few minutes were needed to sort out the salient facts that Mr. Snowe was deceased, that Mrs. Snowe had opened the agency some years before, and that no one saw Mrs. Snowe without an appointment.

“They are arranged weeks in advance,” she told him earnestly. “You might request an appointment now, and we would inform you if she had an earlier opening.”

“That won’t do,” Ward said, smiling because her voice took on a reverential tone whenever she mentioned her mistress. “I sacked the governess you sent. I require a new one, but I have a few stipulations.”

Her mouth fell open and she squeaked, “You sacked one of our governesses? A Snowe’s governess?”

He rocked back on his heels and waited until she stopped spluttering and ran off to inform someone of his crime as regards Miss Lumley.

To be fair, even withstanding Miss Lumley’s regrettable habit of weeping like a rusty spigot, she had been better than many of the governesses he’d had as a child.

All the same, she hadn’t been right for this particular position. His recently orphaned half-siblings were opinionated and idiosyncratic, to say the least.

He needed a really fine specimen of a governess, someone special.

Eugenia hadn’t moved from her chair in three hours, and yet, to all appearances, the pile of correspondence on her desk had hardly diminished.

She stifled a moan when her assistant, Susan, entered with another fistful of letters. “These arrived this afternoon, and Mr. Reeve is asking to see you.”

A drop of ink rolled from Eugenia’s quill and splashed in the middle of her response to a frantic lady blessed with twins. “Bloody hell, that’s the third letter I’ve ruined today! Would you please repeat that?”

“Mr. Reeve is here,” Susan said. “You will remember that we sent Penelope Lumley to him a week ago, on an emergency basis.”

“Of course. He’s the Oxford don with two orphaned half-siblings to raise,” Eugenia said.

“Likely born on the wrong side of the blanket, just as he was.” Susan leaned against Eugenia’s desk and settled in for a proper gossip. “Not only that, but Reeve was jilted at the altar last fall. I suspect the lady realized what that marriage would do for her reputation.”

“His father is the Earl of Gryffyn,” Eugenia pointed out. She didn’t add that Reeve was outrageously wealthy, but it was a factor. Registry offices didn’t pay for themselves.

“He’s as arrogant as if he were an earl himself. I peeked at him, and he’s got that look, as if the whole world should bow to him.”

Eugenia gave a mental shrug. It was unfortunate that the conjunction of a penis and privilege had such an unfortunate effect on boys, but so it was.

Without just the right governess, they never learned how to be normal. Having grown up in a household that prided itself on eccentricity, Eugenia was a fierce proponent of the virtues of conventional living.

Better for oneself, and infinitely better for the world at large.

“He’s wickedly handsome, which probably plays a part in it,” Susan continued. “I could tell that he always gets his way. Though not,” she added with satisfaction, “with the lady who jilted him.”

Rich, privileged, and handsome, for all he was a bastard: a formula for disaster, from Eugenia’s side of the desk. She crumpled the ruined letter and threw it away. “I find it hard to believe that he has a complaint about Penelope.”

Some of Eugenia’s governesses were formidable, even terrifying women who could be counted on to train a child as spoiled as a week-old codfish.

Others were loving and warm, just right for orphans. Penelope Lumley was sweet as a sugarplum, and, admittedly, about as interesting. But to Eugenia’s mind, grieving children needed love, not excitement, and Penelope’s eyes had grown misty at the very idea of two waifs thrown into an unknown brother’s care.

“He told Ruby that he had sacked her,” Susan said. “I have a tear-stained note from Penelope to prove it.”

“Did she say what happened?”

“Lines were struck through and she’d wept over it. I couldn’t make out much beyond a reference to a locust, though perhaps she meant a swarm of them, à la the Book of Exodus.”

Miss Lumley’s Biblical reference was unsurprising; Snowe’s specialized in hiring daughters of vicars, as that circumstance often resulted in ladylike accomplishments with a total lack of dowry.

“I can’t think of a reference in the Bible to a single locust,” Eugenia said.

“I wouldn’t know,” Susan said with an impish grin. “My father’s Bible lessons never took hold.”

Eugenia leaned forward and gave Susan a poke. “There’s a reason I never sent you out as a governess. You’d unleash a plague of locusts on the man who tried to sack you. I suppose I’ll have to see him, but I shan’t give him another governess.”

“I would guess Penelope’s nerves got the best of her,” Susan said, standing up and shaking out her skirts. “She has masses of them and they make her twitchy.”

“That is no reason for dismissal,” Eugenia said firmly. “She is an excellent governess, and just what those children need.”

Mr. Reeve should have thanked his lucky stars that she had sent him anyone—twitchy or not—but the fact that he’d appeared in the office suggested that he didn’t appreciate the value of a Snowe’s governess.

The mother to whom she’d been writing—not to mention poor Winnie—was one of many begging her for help. Mr. Reeve had been sent Penelope only because of his orphans.

Snowe’s Registry office was the most elite establishment of its kind, renowned for its promise to take children “to majority or marriage, whichever came first.” As Eugenia saw it, that vow was a pledge to “her” children. She had been known to keep a governess in place, the wages paid by the agency, even if a family lost its funds.

But if a family simply didn’t like the governess? That was something different altogether. She couldn’t spend her time shuttling women around England because one interfering man thought his charges deserved someone better than Penelope Lumley.

“Please ask him to join me,” Eugenia said, coming out from behind her desk and walking over to the window looking onto Cavendish Square.

Every year she swore that she would take more fresh air and exercise, and somehow the days spun by in the whirligig that was Snowe’s. Her house was only a few steps from the office, which meant she often worked until she went home and fell into bed.

“Shall I order tea?” Susan asked.

“No,” Eugenia replied. “I mean to dispense with him quickly and go for a walk in the square.”

“I doubt you have time,” Susan said apologetically. “You have the Duchess of Villiers, and I squeezed in Lady Cogley after that.”

“Is there a problem in Her Grace’s nursery? I thought Sally Bennifer was very happy there.”

“Sally has accepted a proposal from the vicar. He must have behaved in a most unvicarish fashion, because she needs to marry spit-spot. Ergo, the duchess needs a replacement.”

“Is ‘unvicarish’ a word?”

“I suppose not,” Susan said. “But the man took his post only a few months ago, so he must have jumped on Sally like a cat on raw liver. My father would not approve.”

“How about sending her Penelope Lumley, since she’s now free?”

“Penelope might be put off by the irregular nature of the Villiers household,” Susan said doubtfully. Most of Villiers’s children were now grown, but he had raised six illegitimate children under the same roof as the three born to his duchess.

“Mary Tuttle,” Eugenia suggested.

Susan nodded. “I’ll ask her. And I’ll be listening during Reeve’s visit, in case his claim to being a gentleman isn’t as accurate as it might be. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in a ballroom.”

After a few unfortunate incidents during which degenerates had acted on their conviction that any woman engaged in commerce had no morals and would welcome their advances, Eugenia had had a discreet peephole drilled in the wall between her office and Susan’s; Susan could dispatch their footman to the rescue, if need be.

“Don’t worry,” Eugenia said now. “I’ll brain him with the poker.” Their fireplace implements were topped with solid brass knobs for just that reason.

“Actually, Mr. Reeve is so handsome that women likely just drop at his feet,” Susan said, with a smirk. “If I hear a thump as you fall to the floor, I’ll be sure to leave the two of you alone.”

Eugenia rolled her eyes. “I might prostrate myself before a freshly baked crumpet, but never a man.”

Susan took herself away, and a moment later the door opened again. “Mr. Reeve,” Ruby announced.

The man who strode into the room was tall, with thick brandy-brown hair and darker eyebrows, the color of tarnished brass.

He had a lean rangy look, but something about the way his coat fit across his upper arms made Eugenia suspect he was muscled. What’s more, his nose had been broken in the past.

This was not the sort of person who typically appeared in Snowe’s refined drawing room. He breathed a different kind of air than did the mothers she dealt with daily.

Abruptly, Eugenia realized that she was staring, her thoughts straying in directions they hadn’t gone for years.

Since Andrew’s death.

She didn’t give a damn what Mr. Reeve’s thighs looked like!

And she would do well to keep it in mind. He was a client, for goodness’ sake. Did she see . . .

No she didn’t.

And she didn’t want to, either.